ed Jenny, smiling again.

"Evil," he replied uncompromisingly. "Wanton evil if you don't mean to
marry this young man--deliberate evil if you do."

"Why deliberate evil if I do?"

"You have no right to marry the son of that man. It would create a
position unnatural, cruel, hideous."

"Alison, Alison!" I murmured. I thought that he was now "growing hot."
But he took no notice of me--nor did Jenny.

"An inevitable and perpetual quarrel between father and son, a perpetual
humiliation for a man who trusted you--and was wrong in doing it! Dare
you do that--with what there is lying between you and Lord Fillingford?"

"What is there?"

"At least deceit, broken faith, trust betrayed, honor threatened. Is
there no more?"

Jenny looked at him now with somber thoughtfulness.

"We're not children," he went on. "If there is no more, what was easier
than to say so, to lay scandal to rest, to give an account of yourself?
Wasn't that easy?"

"Lying is generally pretty easy," said Jenny.

He raised his hands in the air and let them fall in a despairing
gesture. "You yourself have said it!"

"Yes, I have said it, Mr. Alison. You've always believed it. Now you
know it. We're face to face."

"Then face to face I say to you that you're no fit wife for that young
man."

"No fit companion either, perhaps?"

"I'll say no more than I need say. A sinner who repents is a fit
companion for the angels, and joyfully welcomed. Haven't you read it? I
am on your duty, not to God--I pray Him that He may teach you that--but
to the honorable man whom you deceived and humiliated. You charge him
with having wanted to marry you for your money. Take it on that basis,
if you will. What did you want to marry him for? Was it love? No; his
title, his position. Was the exchange unfair? The bargain was fair, if
not very pretty. Even to that bargain you were grossly false. If I'm
wrong in my facts, say so: but if my facts are right, in very decency
let his house--let his son--alone."

"Your facts are right," she said. "I was false to the bargain. Have you
said all you have to say, Mr. Alison?"

"I have done--save to say that what I have said to you I have said to
nobody else. I am no chatterer. What I've said to-day I've said in
virtue of my office. What you have admitted to me I treat as told me in
the confessional."

She bowed her head slightly, accepting his pledge. "I know that," she
said. Then she turned to me, smiling sadly. "I'm afraid